


You, the light in my dark.

by Dark_Ruby_Regalia



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: A mysterious and beautiful stranger, But Ignis is a Rational Man... Isn't he?, I wish there was more to tag than that!, Kind of a faerie AU, Lost in the Woods, M/M, Midnight Picnics, Some magical business happening
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-09-24 01:16:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17091329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dark_Ruby_Regalia/pseuds/Dark_Ruby_Regalia
Summary: Ignis meets a mysterious stranger in the woods on his daily walk.For a while he thinks he'slost,when he is in fact beingfound❤





	You, the light in my dark.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skitty_titty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skitty_titty/gifts).



The scenery on his routine walk was shifting with the seasons. Ignis put one foot in front of the other like clockwork - a well-worn habit taken down a well-worn path - and his mind processed everything in terms of deviation from average. The average of summer was a static of all-permeating heat, the flick and crackle of grasshoppers in dry pasture, the trees voluminously leafy, their shade dense. Today, several weeks into Fall, the air had become perceptibly more moist; the grass beside the path was a wash of fresh, gentle green; the trees were disrobing in swathes of red and gold, their canopy thinning overhead, letting dapples of sunshine skitter at his feet with the brisk breezes that came with the evening. He might have misjudged his time today; though he knew the sun was setting earlier as the year drew near the equinox, he perhaps hadn’t adjusted quite enough tonight. Or perhaps he was walking more slowly, with so much change to take in. He puzzled over whether to turn back early - a thoughtful scowl creasing his brow while he wrestled with habit vs. circumstance - when he was distracted by something off the path to his left. A glimmer, he thought, between trunks, just beyond where the trees closed rank into the protective forest they formed the fringe of. Though he was a man in full appreciation of a schedule, he was also incredibly curious, and right now - despite the hour, despite the dwindling light - he left the path to investigate. 

A few layers deep, he caught sight of the glimmer again, correcting his course to make his way to it. It seemed luminescent, and - as is the way with twilight - any small brightness robs its surrounds of all detail. The closer he drew, the more he focused there, everything else around him became _less_. Ignis found himself reaching to touch each tree as he passed it, compensating for lack of visibility; fallen leaves shuffled in a rustling whisper underfoot that could have unnerved him, were he not as rational as he was. The thought crossed his mind though - that this was probably the point he should get a shiver down his spine - and as if on cue, his mind started recounting local folktales, all intrinsically linked to these woods, about strange phenomenon and disappearances and people who’d been lost for weeks on end, only to return to the township sometimes addled, forever altered. Happy, though. He held onto that point: the folklore, though spooky, was not menacing. As cautionary tales go, these were not the most dissuasive, and were more… perplexing. Fantastic. To the right disposition, maybe even _enticing_.

His thoughts bore him to the last line of trees before the glow, and he stopped, one hand against rough bark, lungs filled with the heavy, earthen air of damp forest and disturbed leaf-litter. Before him, contained perfectly by a sentinel circle of trees, was a ring of mushrooms. 

They were an ethereal, bioluminescent blue, so strange compared to everything around them that they seemed more a manifestation in Ignis’ mind rather than a presence in the forest. Ignis was enthralled - the shiver that did now shake his spine was one of fascinated awe, rather than fear - and lifted a foot to step closer, to step _over_ , when--

“Don’t,” came a voice from the darkness beyond the circle. It was unmistakably a command tinged with a plea. 

Ignis froze to the spot, his heart instantly hammering in his chest with surprise. 

“Hello?” he asked the darkness, with more bravado than he felt, scanning between trunks, between shadow and silhouette and anything he could pretend was discernible beyond the dozen upon dozen glowing blue caps. 

Silence.

He addressed the darkness again, though with much less bravado, barely more than a whisper. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t step into the circle…” this voice in the dark also wavered. “Please.”

“Who are you?” Ignis was intrigued again. Despite his initial scare, this voice didn’t frighten him. Quite the opposite, he realised: he found it pleasant; a comfort. He felt almost _lured_ by it…

For long minutes, nothing happened. Ignis found himself holding his breath to preserve the silence and the anticipation; then he heard, faintly, that whisper of leaves under feet not his own, coming towards him. At first, all he saw was one of those feet step over the opposite rim of mushrooms. Then the figure of a man appeared, moving forward in the circle until he was at its centre. He was soft-lit from all sides, and for all the world he seemed to glow himself - as if his skin was porcelain, moonbeam, luminous and perfect - and Ignis’ rational mind entirely failed to dismiss it as a trick of the light. Failed to hold him to his caution. Failed to prevent his movement forward, his attempt once again to step over the rim. 

The figure in the centre rushed at him, spirit-fast, as though materialising before him with both hands on his chest. His eyes were wide with alarm and insistence, and his voice now very much desperate. “You can’t,” he pressed, and he pushed Ignis back with hands splayed against the fabric of Ignis’ shirt, braced firmly, determined. “ _Please,_ ” he said again. 

“If you insist,” Ignis conceded, and he leaned back to correct his balance, away from this stranger who still clutched at his clothing and peered up at him through a mess of jet black hair. 

“You usually turn back before now,” the stranger said, lowering his hands finally, almost sheepish. 

“How could you know that?”

His answer didn’t come right away. “I’ve… seen you out here before.”

“I’ve never seen you.”

“That’s the point. You’re not, ah… you’re not supposed to...”

“I’ve never seen you in town, either,” Ignis said, all fear having left him completely. Instead he was trying not to stare impolitely, yet his eyes roamed of their own accord, all too eager to study the details of such a strikingly lovely face. 

“I live in a different town,” was all the answer he was given, though he was now pinned to the spot by a curious gaze returned. 

They considered each other like this for long but not uncomfortable minutes, a smile eventually parting this stranger’s lips as his face relaxed into his delight. Ignis twitched a smile of his own, suddenly recognising himself the bashful one. 

“I’m Ignis,” he offered, hoping very sincerely to hear a name in return.

“Ignis, like fire?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“I’m… Noctis,” and Noctis looked a bit worried suddenly, as though confessing such a thing was giving more than just his name. As if he’d just spoken a secret, and was hopeful - but not convinced - it’d be kept. 

“Noctis, like the night.”

A nod.

Despite himself, Ignis shivered. The evening chill had caught up to him now he’d stood still long enough. He was suddenly distressed by this - by the inconvenience of it, and by knowing, inevitably, he’d have to turn to head home. He found he didn’t want to at all. He didn’t want to leave this moment. Didn’t want to leave this stranger. _Noctis_. He looked over his shoulder to the pitch black of the woods; couldn’t see the path he needed to return to. Couldn’t see a thing at all. 

“You’re going to go, aren’t you?” Noctis asked, and he’d taken a step backwards, the circle of mushrooms now as emphatic a separation as a wall would be in its place. 

“I have to. I didn’t come prepared for company, nor the cold; as you said, I usually turn back before now…”

Noctis’ face fell, and Ignis recognised in it the sad acceptance of a foregone inevitability. His shoulders dropped and a pained, sardonic grimace tugged at the corner of his lip. Ignis felt a tug in his own chest to witness it - knew it was a mirror of his own sentiment - and surprised himself by stumbling over a small and stuttered proposal as salve: “I… I could come back? If you like. If…”

The reaction was instant. Noct was, once again, bright and vivid and animate with hope. A yes, without any word ever leaving his lips. 

“Tomorrow, then? At the same time?”

Another nod, and a step closer.

“Shall I bring dinner?”

“I pick at my food & wouldn’t want to waste yours,” Noctis admitted, rather sheepishly, before stepping right outside the circle beside Ignis, looking up at him with eyes as bright as stars. “I’ll walk you back to the path.”

“No need; I can find my way.”

Noctis’ laugh was smooth and silken. “No you can’t,” he said. “You’re lost.”

“I think I’d know if I was lost, Noctis.”

“Okay. I’ll let you try to go.” He gestured non-specifically to the trees all around them, the spaces between dark and identical, nothing visible beyond the first layer. Ignis figured he could turn his back to the circle and walk a straight line - that’s how he remembered coming in - so he started out, but he had a doubt which swelled with each hesitant step he took. Branches grabbed at him from nowhere; trunks loomed into his vision. But he held fast to his determination, to his logic and reason, and kept going some distance more. Away from the mushrooms, he thought maybe he’d be able to adjust to the understory darkness just enough, so he stopped and blinked - slipped his glasses from his face to give a gentle press at his eyelids - then returned them to the bridge of his nose. Nothing. Before he could sigh his frustration, a cool, soft hand slipped gently into his. 

“It’s this way,” Noctis said, close to his ear, and he turned Ignis off his course, leading him perfectly through the tangle of trunk and limb as though he could see the way clear as day.

They burst out beside the path beneath a sky crowded with bright, pinpoint stars.”I don’t understand,” Ignis mumbled, righting the world in his mind as he took in the landmarks he recognised. Then he turned to Noctis, to find his upturned face alight with amusement and hope. 

“Will you really come back tomorrow?” Noctis asked, unashamedly eager. 

Even if he wanted to - which he didn’t - Ignis didn’t think he could ever refuse. “I will.”

Without another word, Noctis let Ignis’ hand go and for the second time that night, took a few steps backward. This time, he seemed happy; a smile sweet on his lips. Ignis waved once, then set out along the path home, resisting every urge to look back. 

~

By the time he made it to his own front door, Ignis was doubting every second of his evening. Had he fallen in the woods and hit his head? Was he taking ill? Were the mushroom spores poisonous, and he succumbed to a hallucination? All seemed more likely than the alternative. But another part of him hoped - hoped with all he had - that this surreal experience had been the truth. That he’d met a beautiful stranger, named for the night, and that perhaps he’d get a chance to see him again. He dearly wanted Noctis to be more than a dream.

The next morning he had all but dismissed the incident, though as the day wore on he started to dwell. _I live in a different town_ , Noctis had said to him, in the forest, in a circle of mushrooms. _I’ve seen you out here before_ , he’d said, as if he spent time in the woods frequently enough to notice…

Ignis puzzled through it all day, but as he did so, he also planned. He packed a blanket, found his thermos, put together a little collection of snacks. If Noctis wasn’t interested in dinner, he wasn’t going to overdo it and cater just to himself. Tea and nibbles and a warm coat would be plenty. Was he really going to do this? _Apparently,_ he realised, while he was boiling the kettle and filling the thermos and adding milk and a tiny bit of sugar, _he was_. 

As afternoon submerged beneath the rising dusk, he set out. He was purposefully leaving later than his usual schedule, trying to replicate his accident from the night before, feeling a little shy and foolish for this basket he carried and the blanket slung over his arm, but committed to the experiment regardless. His nerves rose as he neared the woods; butterflies running rampant through his belly as he left the path to approach them. He paused at their outer limit, yet to duck beneath the canopy, his mind fidgeting with a notion to turn back, when--

“You came,” sounded a voice from within the shadows. A voice more lovely than memory could do justice to, and all the sweeter still for its evident joy. 

Noctis stepped from behind a trunk, scanning the track to ensure it was empty, then reached a pale hand for Ignis to take, and made to lead him back into the woods. A precise reversal of the night prior. “This way,” he’d said, with a grin thrown over his shoulder. Ignis hadn’t said a word yet, but he stumbled to follow, eager and willing. 

He saw the glow swell before them as each layer of trees fell behind, until they were right there at the edge of the circle again, the world beyond erased to nothing. Unimportant, ignored, soon forgotten. Noctis let go of Ignis’ hand to turn to face him, still grinning, blue eyes alight with the same flicker of the unreal that this entire little pocket of the woods seemed alive with. 

“I only bought sweet tea and a blanket to sit on,” Ignis said, without knowing what else to add. He looked around for a place to spread out their evening, running his eyes over the clear, flat ground within the circle, noticing the change in expression that bought to Noctis’ face. A worry of some sort.

“Here,” Noctis suggested, and he pointed to a patch of ground, beside two trunks, a good few metres from the clearing itself. “Here will be good.”

Ignis put down his basket and shook the blanket out, laying it as flat as was possible across the forest floor. Then he slipped his shoes off at the edge and stepped on with socked feet, looking up to find Noctis watching him. 

“Something the matter, Noctis?” he asked. This was all so strange, he’d no clue how to go about anything, and his uncertainty was growing. 

“No, nothing the matter. It’s just-” and the pause did nothing to ease Ignis’ nerves - “I can’t let you into my circle, but here you are, inviting me so easily into yours.”

“It’s just a blanket, Noctis. To keep the dirt from our food.”

“And for finding a place to belong in the world.”

Ignis laughed, because Noctis was so serious about this. He also recognised the truth in his words. “Yes, that too. Will you sit?”

Noctis did, and he leaned toward Ignis eagerly, and to compound everything that was so strange about this, said “I can’t wait to watch you eat.”

“You what?” Ignis nearly barked with surprise. “ _Why?_ ”

“I don’t know exactly, but it’s the things we have in common that are somehow the most interesting!”

“Is there so much that’s uncommon?”

“Not that I can see from here I suppose. From the forest I mean. But I’ve read books, and I’ve been able to travel once or twice. I’ve seen one of your cities. They’re very different. So are the people, all together. Separately - like having you here - it’s not as startling as a group feels.”

Ignis wanted to ask two questions at this point. One about where Noctis could possibly be travelling _from_ , and the other - the question he went with - a repeat from the previous night: “Who _are_ you?”

Noctis’ laughter was sudden and magical. Addictive. “I want to tell you, Ignis…”

“But you won’t.”

“Not tonight.”

Ignis puzzled over why he didn’t feel slighted by this. Why Noctis, by withholding so openly, didn’t feel dishonest nor cruel. He slipped the thermos from his basket, and reached in a second time to find his cup. “I know you said you didn’t want dinner, but I bought a second mug, should you feel like tea?”

“A hot drink brewed from leaves.”

“...Yes.”

“We have it too, but it’s probably different. Can I maybe try yours first? To save the mug?”

“If you like,” Ignis said, and the tea furled steam into the air between them as he poured, and Noctis looked from the mug to Ignis to the mug to Ignis all the while, until Ignis re-capped the thermos, turned the mug around, and handed it to Noctis handle-first. “It might be quite hot.”

Noctis raised it to his mouth. He looked up at Ignis over the lip of the cup, hesitating, then took a tentative sip. “It’s-” and he took another sip- “It’s good. I’ll keep this one.”

Ignis poured himself the second mug, wrapping his hands around it to trap its warmth. Every second brought with it a new question that he didn’t ask, for fear of receiving an evasion in response. The two of them were studying each other again with fast dwindling reservation. Silence settled around them comfortably until Noctis broke it.

“Why did you come back?” he asked.

Ignis was taken off guard. Each of his possible answers felt awkward, so he chose one that he hoped most resembled his truth. “You seemed lonely, I suppose.”

“You did this for me then?” 

“For me as well.” 

Noctis mulled a while. “You’re always on your own when you walk.”

“I’m always alone at home, too,” Ignis confessed. 

Noct sighed. “I’m not.”

“Is that why you come to these woods?”

“Maybe. Though I’m apparently too curious for my own good. And I am also apparently rebellious, so that could be why as well.”

“Who else is at home with you?”

“Family.”

“Ah, you have a family.”

“No no, not like that! It’s my father. And entourage. That’s all. It’s always crowded where he is, and unfortunately, where I must always be too. Footsteps to follow.”

“Is he important?”

“He is.”

“So _you’re_ important.”

“Please don’t think that.”

“Are you running away?”

Noctis gave another laugh, but it was bitter at the edges. “Every second, until I go back, yes. I guess so.”

They finished their tea in a studious companionship, enjoying the presence and the company without pressure. Not a trace of the strangeness that plagued Ignis’ day remained, and he was vaguely aware of his contentedness, his ease here with an evasive but captivating stranger. What a turn his life had taken overnight; how long would it last… He entertained a thought to stay here indefinitely, but shook it away. 

“I should go soon,” he said, his reluctance clear in his voice. 

“I know.” Noctis wore his crestfall like a heavy robe around his shoulders. 

“What do we do, Noctis?” 

“I’d love you to come back again, though I could never ask it of you.”

“And if I offered?”

Noctis mused a space. He wrestled with something dark that clouded his face, but he drove it away. “I’d accept. I’d like it very much.”

“Tomorrow then,” Ignis said as he rose, sweeping empty mugs into the basket and slipping feet back into his shoes. They folded the blanket together. 

“Let me lead you back,” Noctis said. Ignis didn’t protest; he took the hand that was given and let himself be led.

~

The next day he spent impatient to return, rushing through everything, willing himself not to break into a jog along the trail. Noctis was waiting at the treeline, leaning against a trunk, a flash of teeth in his warm smile bright in the twilight. 

And he was there the night after, too. He took the blanket from Ignis’ arm so he could link his through it, and Ignis stayed much too late talking and listening and longing for more time. 

Then the next night he arrived to find Noctis again ready for him, and once they’d spread the blanket down, Noctis spread another of his own across their knees - a rich, black brocade etched with vines that curled and grew unfamiliar. He had brought a basket of his own too, and pulled from it two glasses that were round and exquisite and nested perfectly in the palm. He poured a rich liquor into them - just a little bit - that was dense and dark and smooth on the tongue, sweet and potent and hot in the belly. Ignis sipped it slowly just as Noctis did, mesmerised by how unknown it was. 

“Noctis,” he said, softened by drink. “You are enchanting.”

“Shh,” Noctis whispered, leaning close to press a finger to Ignis’ lips. “You can’t say that.” 

“Shall I choose a different word?” Ignis asked, a little tease in the question. “You are a mystery, is all I mean. Is that better?”

“Better,” Noctis said, and he twisted away for a second, coming back around with a bowl filled with small fruits that glistened like jewels. “Careful when you eat them. They have a seed in the middle,” he explained, and bit through one to hold a half out to show. 

“Where did you find such things,” Ignis asked, as his teeth sunk through, and the flavour he found was almost as mysterious as he’d just described Noctis as.

“They’re from home,” Noctis answered, though he was alert for Ignis’ reaction. Ignis had quick learned the flash of his eyes like this usually came with a change in topic. Still, he pressed it.

“Where exactly _is_ home? And how do you get from there to the here each night?”

Noctis threw his seed toward the ring of mushrooms. Stalling, at least, instead of refusing another answer. “The circle,” he began, hesitant. “It’s a doorway...”

“Which is why you won’t let me step in.”

Noctis nodded.

“What would happen if I did?”

“Don’t joke, Ignis.”

“I’m not joking, Noctis.”

“You’d be bound to me. Irrevocably.”

Ignis smiled, amused. If Noctis wanted to keep his secrets so badly, who was he to interfere. “So this doorway takes you to another world, I take it?”

Another nod - just one - in acknowledgement.

“And I suppose you, being somehow important, are probably the King, ruling over a magical kingdom with a million adoring subjects clambering for your attention…”

“I’m just the prince, Iggy.” Noctis was sullen, head bowed toward his lap, rubbing at one hand with the other in his discomfort. Ignis wasn’t blind to it. 

“If you can call me Iggy, am I allowed to call you Noct?” he wasn’t sure whether it would help. But he hoped.

Noctis’ reaction was instant. A curl at the edge of his lip and a softening of his brow. He met Ignis’ eyes. “Please do,” he said, though he was still nervous about something. “Can’t imagine what you think of me now though… I worry you’ll not visit again.”

“Because you’re a runaway prince who steps out of a mushroom circle?”

“Do you believe me?”

“Honestly, Noct, I don’t know. But maybe I don’t need to. I can’t see how it changes anything for us. We meet at the edge of a seldom-used walking trail and spend our hours sitting on the forest floor. Royalty or not, we both get sore bums and dead legs.”

“Oh my gods, Iggy,” Noc laughed, and the tension broke, and Noct lay back and pulled the brocade tight up under his chin. He gazed up at Ignis, his mess of hair falling away from his face, dazzlingly beautiful. “Will you come again tomorrow?”

“I thought you said you couldn’t ask,” Ignis muttered, boldly smoothing one errant lock from Noct’s cheek. “Of course I’ll come.”

~

Ignis went into the forest each night for the next week, and part of the week that followed. Noct spoke of the hollow corridors he called home and the crowd of people indifferently tending it; the way he’d sneak through the gardens that were too tamed to feel natural, escaping from the palace walls, hidden under hood and cloak until he’d left the city far behind, and could breathe air into his lungs again. Of course everybody was furious, but what could or would they do? He was redundant to his father, trapped by propriety, split into the face he had to wear and his mind that dreamed of freedom. 

Ignis listened without speaking; often lying there with eyes closed while Noct tried to describe the sights and sounds of a world too vivid to have come from imagination. Sometimes they twined hands under the brocade cover - holding onto the moment with a literal gesture - each giving a squeeze of call or response to make sure the connection was strong. 

Ignis would speak of his life defined by the anonymity of structure, each day the same as the one before. How he always thought that was reassuring somehow, until Noct came along, and his schedule collapsed, and he felt - finally - as though part of him was truly _living_. 

_I could say the same thing,_ Noct had said. _How is it we can each feel so differently tied down._

Ignis confessed that his colleagues had been expressing concern since he’d shown up late a few mornings in a row, and tired every other. But more concerning to them was his evident _happiness_ , his sudden propensity to daydream, and how little care he seemed to have about these changes himself. _They made someone come and ask me whether I needed some time off,_ Ignis had chuckled. _I almost said yes, but the days would feel too long without some way to pass the time until… Well, until you._

Noct had rolled clear into Ignis’ arms that night, and Ignis thought he caught a tear glint bright in the dim-lit glow against cheek. He was distracted by the notion the glow had gradually _diminished_ \- that the circle of blue caps were fading - a thought that troubled him deep in the recesses of his mind, where he buried it and wished it gone. He pulled Noct tight to his chest, daring to nose his way through Noct’s hair, staying until dawn twisted itself through the dwindling canopy of branches whose leaves were almost shed and bare. He didn’t get to work that day.

That night, after a fitful afternoon trying to nap away the aches of countless hours spent lying on the ground, he returned to the forest to find Noct on the path, right there in the middle of it, lit by the moon. He looked forlorn and alone in a way that tugged at Ignis’ heart, and he hurried to him, a dread growing in his gut.

Noct didn’t take his hand tonight. Didn’t lead him off the path. Instead he held out his open palm, and in it a fine chain puddled at its core, where a small, black, metallic skull peeked out from the tangle. It was a necklace. 

“What’s this?” Ignis asked. He studied Noct’s face for clues to make sense of, but for once it betrayed nothing.

Instead, he said “To keep you safe,” and picked out the clasp, letting the skull drop on the chain into the air between them.

“From what?” Ignis’ worry grew.

“From the magic and the madness of knowing me.”

“I don’t believe in magic,” Ignis said, sharper than he’d have perhaps intended.

“Yet here you are.” A whisper.

“By choice, not by spell!”

“Then this is but a trinket, Iggy. Humour me.”

Ignis bowed his head, and Noct’s careful fingers traced from the front of his neck to the nape as he spread the chain around it and fastened the clasp behind. Then he lay his forehead against Ignis’, closed his eyes, took a breath.

“Thank you,” he whispered. Solemn, hollow.

“Why does this feel like goodbye?”

“I can’t come back for a while.” 

“Why not?” Ignis was instantly ready to panic. He felt a tremble in his hands. Heat in his chest. “What do you mean _can’t_?”

“The circle is dying for the season. It’s already weak; even tonight I’m taking too much of a chance.”

“Enough with this mystical doorway stuff, Noct. _Please_ don’t leave.”

“I’ll come back. In fall. When the circle grows again.”

“You will?”

“Of course. But-” and he fiddled with the charm on the necklace where it nested perfectly in the dip of Ignis’ throat- “will you?”

And before Ignis could answer, Noctis leaned up to quiet him with a kiss. It was soft and chaste, a press of mouths; long, dark lashes closed against pale cheeks; fingers tangling together between bodies that longed to pull closer, but couldn’t... Because Noctis broke away, and feigned a smile, and fled into the woods. Ignis was left alone on the path, his mind confused, his heart bereft, and his lips committed to a memory.

~

Through a winter long and cold, in every weather, he’d kept up his walk daily. Driven to the woods; wandering deeper than he should’ve dared. He grew familiar with each tree by their pattern of bark; made his way to the clearing with the circle so awfully barren and bare. Just snow, blank and bright in a cold sun, beneath the naked branches of dormant trees. He was distressed by how easily he found his way home. No hand leading him; barely any forest to be lost in. It didn’t make sense...

And come spring, with the melt, he found the clearing all mud, while overhead the trees swelled their buds, mocking him by moving on while he couldn’t. Wouldn’t. And through summer, with the light from the gap in the canopy, he found a small patch of grass growing, green and vital. He fiddled at the skull around his neck to remind himself he hadn’t dreamed those short, wonderful weeks all those seasons ago. And come Autumn again, he began to stay out later. Much later. He took his dinner, his jacket, his thermos of tea. Stayed after dark with a flashlight, throwing the forest into harsh relief, brash and tactless and clinical as it swept its beam across everything. 

 

Then finally, one night… he saw it. The faintest smear of light on the ground, almost imperceptible unless you’d been familiar with it once before. Ignis ran, and almost by intuition he made his way between the woods, slipping unscratched beneath branches and over fallen logs, until he slid to a stop at the edge of the clearing. 

Through newly-fallen leaves he found a circle of fresh nubs just beginning to emerge, like buttons in the earth that would open it up. 

He caught his breath, incredulous, hopeful.

“...Noct?” he spoke to the gathering dark, his voice weak with the fear of receiving no answer.

But he did.

“Hello, Iggy,” came a familiar and deeply missed voice from the centre of the circle, and no sooner had Ignis heard it, he saw the smile that spoke it, and the eyes and the mess of silken jet hair, and the skin that seemed so pale it was lit from within, and--

\-- and he stepped over the rim in his rush to that centre, to the arms that caught him and the lips that met his own. A kiss so desperate, so sweet, so _right_ he felt tears well in his eyes. 

“Do you realise what you’ve done…?” Noct asked, eyes wide, though his hands were gripped tight around Ignis’ waist.

“I do.”

“You belong to me now...”

“Irrevocably.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for your wonderful prompts, skitty_titty! It was such a joy contemplating all the possibilities, then dreaming this little AU up for you :)  
> Wishing you a very Happy Holidays! ❤


End file.
